Mike,

As the lower part of this message shows, there are lots of links in any chain and you have almost no control over most of them.

So why would it be that you would accept responsibility? Because your program accepted the 'word' of the OS that data had been written to a HD when it was in fact still write-cached? Because your program acted on a message coming across a LAN that had some characters transposed yet still made 'sense' in your application? Because a user turned his computer off in the middle of a long transaction when it was clearly documented that this must never be done under any circumstannce?

Think about what happens in a modern Windows OS and how much control you have over **any** of that. Think about how Microsoft is forced to test les and less of their new code simply by virtue of the ever-expanding versions of operating systems that they must support. What your application acctually does itself is probably less than 20% of all of the actual processing required to make your application function correctly. Why would you accept responsibility when Microsoft will not?

cheers

>Hi George
>
>In many cases, I'm serving all the roles. How should I not be held responsible? The only time I've ever worried, a client was being sued. My system was audited. Everything checked out, but that was two weeks of terrible anxiety.
>
>>>>>Anyone have any comments on this?
>>>>>
>>>>>http://uk.builder.com/0,39026540,39275698,00.htm
>>>>
>>>>Victor,
>>>>
>>>>If you want the short answer...#$%&
>>>>
>>>>The long answer...?
>>>
>>>lol!
>>
>>Thomas,
>>
>>I'm reminded of Steve McConnell's metaphor for software design...construction. Every basic job you could find in building, say, a frame house, you can find building an application.
>>
>>Both have architects.
>>Both have designers.
>>Both have carpenters (programmers/coders).
>>Both have people that make the materials and the tools (operating systems and compilers as opposed to wood and hammers).
>>
>>Now let's say, that some construction company builds a wood frame house, and after 3 days of use, one of the floors in a room collapses.
>>
>>What they say here is blame the carpenters (programmers), but in this situation, who was really at fault? Did floor collapse because the architect failed to properly calculate the stress? Or was that the designers (engineers) fault. What if the wood was rotten? Or nail gun didn't provide enough force to properly drive the nail?
>>
>>What this reminds me of, Tom, is that female PFC who was stationed in Iraq at the prison, who was recently sentenced to 3(?) years in prison because of her actions there. The thing that bothers me is that no one further up the chain of command has been charged.
>>
>>I may not have served in the military, but both my parents did and there was a neighbor (a captain) who was stationed at the 5th Army headquarters in the neighborhood. Now I may not know all there is to know, but I know this. PFCs, who are not in the field, do not do things like this unless explicitly ordered to. Yet...